Is God’s holiness really reflected in the excommunication of a grieving member who has not been visited? No, God’s holiness is reflected far more in His holy love, His holy compassion, and His holy mercy. Why is this so important? Because in certain segments of conservative evangelicalism, church discipline seems to have gone berserk. Instead of being reserved for the serious and public sins such as that described in First Corinthians 5, it’s no longer uncommon for Christians to be excommunicated for failing to keep their “vow of attendance,” or even for “rebellion” against whatever the elders decide they ought to do (even turning a blind eye to the sins of those elders, or living with abuse).

A couple of weeks ago someone forwarded to me a post from Desiring God that hit me like a punch in the stomach.

In an article called “Kicked Out of Church: How God Brought Me Home” (link), author Scarlett Clay begins her story right after her church had excommunicated her, showing the indignation of her friends at such an injustice, and her own appreciation of their indignation.

But that’s only the first paragraph, and the reason for the excommunication hasn’t yet been divulged. (It’s clear, though, that she expresses contempt for herself about it, so that attitude, along with the title of the post, gives us a hint as to where this is going.)

Though her story unfolds in a somewhat non-chronological order, ultimately we see that

• Her child was diagnosed with a rare and deadly disease through which, over the course of several years, he suffered and died.
• During this time she stopped praying, for five years. She referred to this time as her rebellion.
• While her son was in hospice and dying, “not one single person from our church came to see our son . . . . Not even the pastor.” (Even as I type those words I feel my heart beating faster, and I feel sick to my stomach.)
• She separated from her husband and stopped going to church for a year and a half.
• She was excommunicated by her Reformed Baptist Church (for quitting church? for separating from her husband?). It’s important to note that in Reformed Baptist circles, excommunication is not simply a dropping of a name from the church roll, as it is in many churches. It’s a formal process by which a church member is publicly declared to be apart from God and no longer a part of that body. Church members may variously be told to confront them with their sin or to shun them. (The 9marks.org website is a go-to place for many in conservative Reformed evangelicalism on how church discipline is to proceed.)
• She told her friends she had been excommunicated, they responded with indignation, and she felt justified in her self-pity.
• Over the course of time she saw the hollowness of a culture that looked to itself for answers rather than to God and His Word.
• She began to admire and respect how the church that had excommunicated her had acted consistently with their convictions, remaining “steadfast to the biblical standard” (of what, she does not say), staying “faithful to God” by excommunicating her.
• She prayed her first prayer in five years, asking God to forgive her and receiving His forgiveness. She began to participate in a new church, was reconciled with her husband, and began to study apologetics.

As I read the article and approached the end, I began to fear that the author was going to return to the church that had excommunicated her (the lack of care of which the Desiring God representative I spoke with called “deplorable”), so it was a big relief to me when she didn’t.

But she did have more to say about them.

In excommunicating a grieving member who had quit attending regular meetings, the pastor and elders, she said, were “holy” and “did the right thing.” She called it “loving,” “faithful,” and a reflection of God’s holiness.

But as I read, I had a very different view of it. With only the information in the blog post available to me, I saw this harsh treatment as if someone who hung at the fringes of the body of Christ had been forcibly shoved into cold and darkness.

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